Delhi HC recalls adjournment order in plea filed by 2012 gangrape convict Pawan Kumar Gupta, lists matter for today

Soon after the Delhi High Court on Thursday adjourned the hearing in the plea filed by one of the four convicts in the 2012 Delhi gangrape case to 24 January, the court recalled its adjournment order and listed the matter to be heard on Thursday itself after the 2012 gangrape victim’s lawyers objected against the adjournment. Justice Suresh Kumar Kait had earlier in the day adjourned the matter after the convict, Pawan Kumar Gupta’s lawyer, advocate AP Singh, sought time to file fresh documents. Kait allowed the counsel to take another date in the criminal revision petition filed by Gupta, who claimed his ossification test was not done at that point and he should be given the benefit of that. [caption id=“attachment_5772531” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File image of the Delhi High Court. PTI[/caption] Pawan had approached the Delhi High Court on Wednesday claiming that he was a juvenile at the time of the offence in December 2012. Seeking to be declared a juvenile at the time of occurrence of the incident, Pawan alleged that his ossification test was not conducted by the investigating officers and claimed benefit under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act. He said in his plea that the provision of section 7A of JJ Act lays down that a claim of juvenility may be taken before any court and it shall be recognised at any stage, even after final disposal of the case. Pawan, who was awarded death sentence and lodged in Tihar jail, sought that the concerned authority is directed to conduct his ossification test to ascertain his claim of juvenility. Besides Pawan, the other three convicts in the case are Mukesh, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Kumar Singh. The main accused, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide in Tihar Jail during the trial. Another accused was a minor at the time of the commission of the crime and was sent to a reform facility and released after three years. A 23-year-old paramedic student was gang-raped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of 16 and 17 December, 2012, in a moving bus in South Delhi by six persons before she was thrown out on the road. She died on 29 December, 2012, at a hospital in Singapore. A juvenile involved in the crime was convicted by a juvenile justice board and released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term. With inputs from agencies